Info.

[Lucas Holt]

 From my understanding a DEC Alpha system contained an Alpha processor.  
I don't know a lot about them, but I believe they are RISC based and 
had a portion of the chip that was programmable for the operating 
system to add custom instructions to.  There was a windows NT 4 port to 
the alpha and DEC and later compaq/hp had a Unix for them as well.

Some alpha systems are still in production use.  I know a college 
around here that uses it for a custom security system with keycards.  
The software they use was never ported to the x86 version (IA32 for 
people who hate that term) of NT4.

Lucas Holt
Luke at FoolishGames.com
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'Re-implementing what I designed in 1979 is not interesting to me 
personally. For kids who are 20 years younger than me, Linux is a great 
way to cut your teeth. It's a cultural phenomenon and a business 
phenomenon. Mac OS X is a rock-solid system that's beautifully 
designed. I much prefer it to Linux.'
-- Bill Joy, Wired Article 2003